DECOLONIZING IDENTITY

Where does our story begin?

It is an interesting question, with an interesting answer, a story of the ages before and to come.

Who are the Caquetio? Who am I? Who are you?

History, until now, had distorted our sense of self, belonging, and identity. In Aruba, indigenous heritage has been until now summarized as ancient through the lens of archeology and anthropology, uncivilized through secular settler colonial society and as demonic through religious doctrine. Current knowledge of indigenous inhabitants does not extend beyond the premise out of which said knowledge was interpreted. We are often considered as belonging to the past, with only archeological excavations and anthropological theories to highlight pre-colonial life, such as the distinction between pre-ceramic and ceramic inhabitants. Yet, this does not centralize the voice of indigenous inhabitants, and their descents, which most of us are. Historically, there was never a chance to tell our own story. Western knowledge systems have been centralized as the voice for indigenous inhabitants, all the while disrupting and displacing sacred burial sites and plotting our emergence through an entirely Eurocentric point of view. With very little to go off of, most modern day inhabitants of Aruba, descendant or not, do not receive an honest, authentic, representation of history.

Burial urn in Savaneta disrupted and displaced

The insertion of Catholic and Protestant schools brought on further indoctrination of indigenous inhabitants and Africans brought by boat during the Slave trade. Children of both groups were sent to school, where abuse took place. A further and more thorough investigation can expand on the crimes indicated in previous sentence, however the abuse led to the repression of our traditions, practicies and stories... to an extent. Not all children remained in schools, most did not go, and not all traditional knowledge was lost. It is not 3-4 generations ago that our elders still heard, and even spoke their original language. The few that remained shared traditional wisdom and knowledge through oral tradition, with many stories known today in one form or another. Aruban life at this time continued to grow, while most practicing Catholocism although many traditions and stories were practiced under new terms, definitions or attitudes. The dominant contemporary culture promising a better life with more opportunities, which the people rightfully fight for, towers over the protogenic issues of our identity. The conditions we find ourselves in now emerged out of a 'beginning' wherein most of our freedom and determination was surgically removed, transplanted and isolated throughout the decades of colonialism. It was lost with the loss of names, stories, practices, traditions; the continuities to our way of life. 

With identity, it becomes a problem when you cannot determine for yourself who you are. Having to rely on interpretations that are not rooted in the body and voice of the people it supposedly represents. When you do not know who you are, it is easy to be swept into Eurocentric interpretations or attempts for recognition and inclusion through the very systems which take part in erasure. Although now it is a question in what way we unconsciously take part in our own erasure. After hundreds of years it is now a question if we can remember ancestral knowledge to move forward with auto determination, and responsibility; yet, the obstacle comes with access to traditional and ancestral knowledge. In the same way urns with bones were displaced and objectified, one can think of our identity as being displaced from the center of our being to the periphery of it, operating within conditions that do not represent who one is, being objectified, dehumanized and easily erased.

Burial urn disrupted and displayed.

Colonial ideas still plague us, which is reflected in the way we treat immigrants (anti-blackness & xenophobia), concepts of pure bloodedness, education and what we consider auto determination. These immigrants which are ostracized might as well themselves be descendent of indigenous inhabitants from elsewhere, who themselves may still hold their own traditional ways, or not. Much of indigenous peoples globally have been indoctrinated with colonial religious and secular values, manipulating self-perception, identity, and auto determination. But we cannot meet them with resistance, what we are witnessing is what we find in ourselves, alienated from a culture and heritage robbed from us… a loss of spirit, and with it, robbed of choice.

What can we do? We need to acknowledge the fact we have been robbed from the chance to tell our stories, and that our stories were told without our consultation, and how it was and is being told leads to further self-alienation. In this century there are many ways we can tell our story, and resurrect our identity. Are we indigenous based on a certain percentage of blood? Are we indigenous based on living with the old ways? Are we indigenous based on knowing the exact meaning of petroglyphs? These are all parts of a whole, yet not sum of identity. We must ask ourselves to what degree we measure our own identity, whether externally through facts prone to change by systems not sovereign to us, or internally through choice and self-discovery, through sovereignty. If we can consider that the continuity of identity is not a singular way of being, but a culmination of disciplines, living experiences, memories, knowledge, wisdom and stories, then we can see from ways born of the heart we too are born.  

The very attempt to measure identity is a problem that arises from most western approaches and philosophies, because identity cannot be derived from a measure, identity is the measure, or the catalyzer of qualities which find expressions. One can think of it in terms of gender identity from an indigenous point of view. Is one a man because one was born with a male body? Or one is, as they feel, two-spirited? Thus, is one’s identity based solely on biological make up, or the very essence that determines with choice one’s direction and life? The factors of identity do not make the identity, it is the identity that determines the ‘factors’; we are who we are, and it is born from us and our ways. 

In remembering, having hard conversations with our elders is a start. Even if they may praise Catholicism or Christianity, we must ask ourselves to what point they drove our people to be believe who they are not is who they are, and that who they are is not who they are. There are stories told by some elders still, that they were abused for speaking their language and talking about their ways. It is important to mention that there are practices and traditions which maintained their form and essence, although in a new function or setting, such as agricultural tradition and knowledge carried on in cunucero/cunucera practioners, the kneading of corn or yuca flour by hand in a kudi or bowl (fig 2, 3.), and practices of medicine people carried on in the practices of curanderos/curanderas. However, to reflect on the following question is deeply important.

Caquetio petroglyph (left), Chacobo woman preparing Yuca flour (right).

If you were to wake up today with no chance to determine for yourself your life, what would become of who you are? Today, there is a chance to remember what was once forgotten. What is there to remember? That is the question. There is something to learn from those who have lost touch with their original culture. We are not any less of who we truly are because of history, if not, it gives more reason to remember and be who we are. We still encounter resistance to telling our stories. In professional, educational and contemporary spaces, we are spoken over when stating our perspectives that do not coincide with contemporary knowledge systems, or challenges them and the entire notion of identity, auto-determination, and history. 

Who are we? We are Caquetio.

Our name means “living beings”. To say “Daca Caquetio”, is to say “I am a living being” ("Spirito bibo"), which comes to be, living as the ancestors. The way we live becomes our way of life. From early begins, we stepped forth as livings beings into what is now known as the world, and witnessed the beginning of creation unfold. 

We all die when we lose our spirit… One’s spirit is the silent whisper telling one something we never heard yet know deeply within our hearts. There is where remembering begins, not in books of falsified victors. 

Our story returns as memories in dreams.

We cannot be together [whole] if we cannot remember [home].